Celebrity chef vows to keep outdoor dining open, defying California's lockdown order

California Chef Andrew Gruel is keeping his Los Angeles restaurants Slapfish and Big Parm open, despite the state’s recent ban on outdoor dining.

Some 30 million California residents, including a vast region of Southern California, much of the San Francisco Bay area and a large swath of the Central Valley, are now under a sweeping new lockdown in an urgent attempt to slow the rapid rise of coronavirus cases.

The frustrated restaurant owner and former star of Food Network's “Food Truck Face Off”says he’s poured thousands of dollars into plexiglass and outdoor heaters for his restaurant's large patios to keep his customers safe and says the new state regulations just don’t make sense.

“When you look at the regulations, I can’t have anybody eat outside but I can go to Walmart, I can go to Target. I can go to anyone of these big box retailers and stand in a line of a hundred people,” Gruel told Yahoo Finance Live. “And most of those people in Walmart aren’t wearing masks. Their noses are hanging right out there.”

Gruel’s gripe stems from what he calls the lack of scientific evidence linking COVID-19 to outdoor dining.

“For us to ban people from eating outdoors in a safe environment, I actually feel will exacerbate the problem,” said Gruel. “The fact is the data does not prove that outdoor dining is dangerous in any way. Our customers, eating outside in the open air, socially distanced at spaced tables and in groups of less than four is a safer option than jamming back into an office, their house or a car,” he said.

But even the experts are divided on just how safe outdoor dining is during the pandemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the lowest-risk option is limiting food service to drive-through, delivery, takeout and curbside pickup. Eating outdoors at distanced tables is "more risk," while offering distanced indoor seating is "even more risk."

Gruel slammed California Governor Gavin Newsom and other local politicians in a now viral Twitter post, saying: “I’m not an a–hole – the governor is!”

Gruel says he’s fed up with politicians not practicing what they preach. The same week Newsom warned against Thanksgiving gatherings, the governor was seen dining maskless with 22 people at the $450-a-plate French Laundry restaurant.

“There’s just this disconnect between all of us who are out there trying to make every single dollar important, giving people jobs and what’s happening with this elite class of rulers, specifically in California, telling us what we can and can’t do,” said Gruel.

He believes that restaurants and small businesses are being unfairly targeted by California's new and stricter stay-at-home order.

“Small businesses are not going to fight back because we’re all really tight on our margins,” he said. “Most of us don’t have any cash flow, we don’t have a huge legal team, we don’t have lobbyists.”

Gruel says he’s still waiting for the $150,000 Employee Retention Credit he qualified for in April, and was initially rejected for a federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan. He wants to see the next stimulus package target small business owners and individuals.

“It’s our employees who are getting cut off before the holidays,” says Gruel. “They’re tight on cash flow. $1,200 over an eight month period is not enough to stimulate, and it’s not enough for our team members to be able to survive,” he says.

He asks lawmakers to “stop thinking about the big corporations that might be funding their campaigns” and focus on the small businesses that are “the engine of our economy.”

Gruel says he’s not sure if he’ll be slapped with fines for defying Newsom’s order to shutdown outdoor dining, but says “we can weigh our own cost benefit analysis” when the time comes.

Alexis Christoforous is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @AlexisTVNews.

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